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Wait wait wait.... It's not?
real wasabi root is a bitch to farm, so if you buy wasabi paste and it's not expensive, or if someone serves you more than a tiny dollop of it, it's probably actually horseradish paste with wasabi root extract.
not that it matters, clearly people enjoy the horseradish paste.
Real wasabi paste sounds like a poor value, wasabi doesn’t age too gracefully when grated and you’d presumably pay a markup for the packaging and grating
For those who live in areas with good Japanese grocery stores, I highly recommend looking for some rhizomes and grating it at home. Super easy, less than $10 for several servings, and lasts a couple weeks. If anyone is interested but doesn’t wanna Google it, feel free to reply or DM me and I can send my grater/process.
There are a lot of foods that aren’t quite as good out of their home country, but American grown wasabi is excellent. I’ve had someone tried to gatekeep me but like, I coincidentally am very into sushi and am reasonably friendly with a couple ***/Tabelog gold sushi chefs that I visit when in town, some of the best in the world with access to the highest quality ingredients. I’m not eating the wasabi directly but I can’t tell a difference between theirs and the American one from half moon bay. It’s definitely worth trying if it’s available in your area, you aren’t missing anything by doing it yourself and it takes minutes.
Not to mention that those tryhards going full weeboo on gatekeeping are ignoring various other "heretical" facts of sushi's founding people, like: it's fine to add just about anything you feel like to it. Oh, is krab™ in poor taste? What about ice cream? Snack chips? I mean, FFS, the Japanese have built a global reputation for taking a concept and improving on its efficiency or efficacy or both, all the while these scrote-bearded trogs are pinching their puds to dreams of katanas and isekai redemption. 🤪
Yep. I’m a little too deep into sushi and it’s pretty funny that people will gatekeep ingredients.
The ingredients that Edomae chefs now use are extremely traditional. Essentially every single one was for food safety, not taste. Vinegar, wasabi, and sake in nikiri are all meant to prevent food-borne illness. The red rice vinegar used at high end restaurants was originally used because it was cheap. Fish is obviously readily available. Edomae chefs now use them because they prefer the taste— which I’ll agree with, I make it the same way— not because it’s sacrilege not to. Every one of the top chefs can tell you the history of sushi as a stall food meant to be accessible.
Even crotchety Jiro, who might chastise you for using soy sauce, deviates from tradition by using exclusively white vinegar and adding sugar. Yet the same gatekeepers love that guy (until you reach the super gatekeepers who are too cool for him because he got famous).
Sushi superiority is truly insane to me. I wonder if some assholes back then looked down on the “peasants” for trying to extend the shelf life of their food.
Sorry this comment is so long, I’m way too deep into this. It’s funny, two chefs I know are top five in Japan (thus, some would say, the world), respected beyond belief, and on my first visits they stayed well after close to talk to the dumb foreigner who wanted to improve his at home sushi. One doesn’t speak English and has one of his apprentices translate between us. I guess when you get far enough into sushi, you feel the need to ramble about it.
Do we have a 'best of' around here yet? 'Cause, damn. I'm in.